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Southern Ontario Telephone Company Limited published a Directory of subscribers' telephone numbers in February 1941.  This 70-page, soft-cover booklet included alphabetic listings by surname and business name (much as current telephone directories do), and was the source document for this transcription by John Cardiff.

Officially for the communities of Cayuga, Delhi, Fisherville, Hagersville, Jarvis, Port Dover, Port Rowan, Scotland, Simcoe, Selkirk and Waterford, it included listings for area farmers and several smaller communities as well. The hamlets and villages of ...

  • Langton, LaSalette, Lynedoch, Silver Hill and Wyecombe were listed under Delhi

  • Clear Creek, Cultus, Forrestville, Long Point, St. Williams, and Walsingham, were listed under Port Rowan

  • Bealton, Boston, Hartford, Rockford, Round Plains, Teeterville, Townsend Centre, Tyrrell, Villa Nova, Wilsonville, and Windham Centre were listed under Waterford

  • Bloomsburg, Lynn Valley, Lynnville, Nixon, Normandale, Renton, Rural Route 2 Port Dover, Port Ryerse, Turkey Point, Vittoria, Walsh, and Windham Centre were listed under Simcoe.

Most entries for Cayuga, Fisherville, Hagersville, Jarvis and Scotland were not transcribed for this index, as these communities were not and are not part of Norfolk County.

This three-column transcription includes: Name and Address, text copied "as is" from the source document with modifications as discussed below; Listing, the name of the community each entry was organized under in the original source document; and Phone, the phone number copied "as is" from the source document.

Throughout this transcription, "[sic]" (the word sic in italics, surrounded by square brackets), follows "as is" text that may look like, but is not, a transcription error. Infrequently, transcriber's comments or difficult to read text also appears between square brackets.

There are no Yellow Pages in the source document.  Local advertising banners were scattered throughout the white pages.  A few of these were scanned to illustrate this transcription.

Why transcribe a 1941 document?  Much of Norfolk County's historical record covering the 1800s is now in the public domain and is readily available at local and regional archives. More recent source material is often more difficult to access, especially from a distance.  Hopefully this online transcription will help close that resource gap.

Males who lived on a farm were most frequently listed as "Farmer" while females who lived on farms were most frequently listed as "Farm."  This transcription copied the text beside each name "as is," using the designation that appears in the original source document.

The source document may have contained errors.  Errors may also have been introduced during transcription. As always when using transcriptions, it is best to confirm the data by checking source documents first hand.

This online transcription is not an exact copy of the original.  Several changes were made to accommodate web page design and make using this resource easier for online researchers.  A full list of these changes is presented below for your consideration:

  • Rather than list entries alphabetically by community (Delhi, Simcoe, Waterford, etc.), town listings were merged into a single alphabetical list which includes the name of the town they were originally listed under in the Listing column.

  • The original document used abbreviations in addresses. The letter r was used as an abbreviation of residence.  Feeling that was not intuitive enough, the author of this transcription stretched r to res.  The original document used the letters L and C as  abbreviations of Lot and Concession.  In this transcription Lot is written out in full and Concession is abbreviated to Con.

  • A number of business proprietors and tenant farmers were listed only under the name of the firm (e.g. Delhi Radio John Cardiff Prop). To aid researchers, links have been inserted from the alphabetical listing where the person's name would have appeared.

  • The original document contains alphabetic sequencing errors. We have corrected these, putting all As before Bs, etc. (Hopefully without introducing errors of our own.)

  • Names of some businesses appear in bold type in the original, but not in this transcription.

  • Some business listings included advertising slogans, which were abbreviated in, or omitted from, this transcription.

  • Some business listings included an additional line for the proprietor's residential phone number. These were included in this transcription, sometimes as a separate entry for clarity.

Other data may confuse researchers:

  • Simcoe had a "Brock Street" in 1941 that was subsequently renamed "Kent Street South."  (Later, another street was named "Brock Street.")  The Simcoe street called "Agriculture" in 1941 was subsequentially renamed "South Drive."

  • Simcoe included streets named for Norfolk County, its townships, and local politicians who sometimes bear a pioneer's surname, such as McCall or Tisdale. Simcoe's main street, for example, was/is called "Norfolk Street."  Other Simcoe street names included McCall, Tisdale, and Woodhouse.

  • The Township of Walsingham includes a village called Walsingham (originally called Walsingham Centre).  The original document made no attempt to distinguish the two; neither does this transcription.

  • There used to be a hamlet just north of Simcoe called Colborne, which is now the north part of Simcoe. Colborne is also the name of a major street in Simcoe.

In 1941 most Norfolk County telephones were party lines. Only prominent citizens and select businesses did not share party lines.

Please be patient while waiting for these pages to load. At 28.8 kbps, a few load quickly, but several take over half minute. The largest takes over a minute.
 

 
Copyright 1998-2013 John Cardiff